Day 13 covers all of Chapter 8, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples.

Having last month consider the Buddha’s prediction for Pūrṇa, we consider in gāthās Pūrṇa’s use of expedients.

Thereupon the Buddha, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:

Bhikṣus, listen to me attentively!
The Way practiced by my sons
Is beyond your comprehension
Because they learned how to employ expedients.

Knowing that people wish to hear
The teachings of the Lesser Vehicle,
And that they are afraid of having the great wisdom,
[My sons, that is,] the Bodhisattvas transform themselves
Into Śrāvakas or cause-knowers,
And teach the people with innumerable expedients.

Saying to the innumerable living beings, [for instance,]
“We are Śrāvakas.
We are far from the enlightenment of the Buddha,”
They save them, and cause them to attain [Śrāvakahood]
Even the lazy people who wish to hear the Lesser Vehicle
Will become Buddhas with this expedient in the course of time.

My disciples are performing
The Bodhisattva practices secretly
Though they show themselves in the form of Śrāvakas.
They are purifying my world
Though they pretend to want little
And to shun birth-and-death.
In the presence of the people,
They pretend to have the three poisons and wrong views.
They save them with these expedients.
They change themselves into various forms.
If I speak of all their transformations,
The listeners will doubt me.

Under hundreds of thousands of millions of past Buddhas,
This Pūrṇa practiced strenuously what he should do.
He expounded and protected
The teachings of those Buddhas.

In order to obtain unsurpassed wisdom,
He became the most excellent disciple
Of those Buddhas.
He was learned and wise.
He expounded the Dharma without fear,
And made his listeners rejoice.
He was never tired
Of helping those Buddhas do their work.

He obtained great supernatural powers
And the four kinds of unhindered eloquence.
Seeing who was clever, and who was dull,
He always expounded the Pure Dharma.

He expounded the dharma of the Great Vehicle
To hundreds of thousands of millions of living beings,
And caused them to dwell in the Dharma
So that the worlds of those Buddhas might be purified.

The Daily Dharma from May 15, 2023, offers this:

Knowing that people wish to hear
The teachings of the Lesser Vehicle,
And that they are afraid of having the great wisdom,
[My sons, that is,] the Bodhisattvas transform themselves
Into Śrāvakas or cause-knowers,
And teach the people with innumerable expedients.

The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Eight of the Lotus S̄ūtra. Our fear of the Buddha’s wisdom comes from the attachment we have to our delusions. At some level we know that we are suffering, but we believe that anything different from how we live now will be worse. There are times when someone who seems to share our delusions can help us move away from them. But then as an actor becomes so absorbed in a role that he forgets his real life, those who choose a life in this world of conflict can forget their existence as Bodhisattvas who have vowed to benefit all beings. This Wonderful Dharma reminds us of this vow and helps us appreciate those who are still bound by delusion and what we can learn from them.

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